South African appeals court overturns $315-million nuclear retrofit contract, while Chinese agree to underwrite coal-fired power plant expansion in Zimbabwe.
An AfDB probe revealed that two Hitachi subsidiaries crafted a kickback arrangement with the African National Congress whereby the parties would share commissions from contracts Hitachi won at the Medupi coal-fired power plant in South Africa.
New accreditation of university engineering in Kenya has left out numerous programs after the country's professional engineers' body said the degrees don't meet requirements for graduates to qualify as professional engineers.
China, which stunned western companies by expanding its footprint in Africa in the past decade to fuel its economic boom, is curtailing that construction investment as its economy cools off.
Construction of a new $1.55-billion, 550-kilometer multiproduct fuel pipeline linking landlocked Ethiopia and coastal Djibouti is set to commence next year.
The U.S. Overseas Private Investment Corp. has agreed to provide as much as $400 million in aid for a $700-million, 100-mw solar thermal power project in South Africa.
The first of the 4,764-MW Medupi coal-fired powerplant's six units commenced commercial operations in South Africa in September, almost six months after it was synchronized to the national grid and three years after it initially was set to be operational.
After a competition that drew interest from more than a dozen firms from around the world, a joint venture of Ugandan and South African firms has won a $79-million contract for a multibuilding complex of government facilities and commercial housing in Kampala, Uganda.